JACKSONVILLE  One more kick, and maybe Adam Vinatieri can alter a half million backyard dreams. One more rocket launching NASA-like off his right foot and toward an otherworldly Super Bowl place, and maybe Vinatieri can convince a half million American boys to trade their six-point passes for three-pointers exploding off their toes.

Adam Vinatieri didn't even aspire to be a kicker. Are you crazy? He wanted to be a Tom Brady or a Donovan McNabb, the big man on campus. He didn't want to be defending his fraternity of nerds at the Super Bowl, fielding a question that cuts like a knife.

Are you a real football player?

Vinatieri handles it with good humor, but how would you like it if a pack of strangers kept showing up at your office, the one covered with citations and plaques, for the purpose of asking if you were a real systems analyst.

How would you feel if you were one of the five most valuable systems analysts in the land?

Vinatieri is one of the NFL's five most valuable players, and here's why: If Marty Schottenheimer had him in Round One, the Chargers would've beaten the Jets. If Herman Edwards had him in Round Two, the Jets would've beaten the Steelers.

If the Patriots didn't have him from Day One, Bill Belichick might be entertaining comparisons to Vince Tobin instead of Vince Lombardi. The kicker was responsible for the most absurd start to a dynasty since little Jeffrey Maier reached over the Yankee Stadium wall more than eight years back. It's not humanly possible to drill that 45-yarder against Oakland, under sudden-death stress and 5 inches of snow.

Unless you're a real football player, of course, and one of the best to ever grace a Super Bowl field.

"I'm sure I'll be dreaming all these nights up until the Super Bowl," Vinatieri said Wednesday. "The night before, it will be running through my head a million times."

The vision of another last-second kick, that is. Only Vinatieri doesn't dream like the rest of us dream. The wildest corner of his imagination is cluttered with real-life images, with the winning points scored in Super Bowl XXXVI and XXXVIII, with the greatest pressure kick of all time, against Oakland, and even with those critical first-quarter scores easily forgotten by everyone but his teammates and coach.

Like the one in the AFC Championship Game at Heinz Field, the first three points posted in a 41-27 Steelers defeat. Tom Brady's brilliance, and Ben Roethlisberger's wayward aim, were all the postgame rage. But Vinatieri set the tone by nailing a 48-yarder in a stadium that had never given an opponent a 48-yarder.

"I think it helped the momentum of that game," Vinatieri said, "getting on the board first and not giving them good field position with a miss."

Vinatieri hasn't missed a big kick since '99, when he blew a chip shot in a two-point loss in Kansas City. At game's end Sunday, the Eagles will want the ball on Vinatieri's foot as much as Craig Ehlo and Bryon Russell wanted the ball in Michael Jordan's hands.

So what if he looks more like a PGA club pro than a difference-maker in a game of big men and violent collisions. Vinatieri was a high school quarterback, linebacker and wrestler out of South Dakota, an athlete who would never hesitate to chase down Herschel Walker the way he did as a rookie. Bill Parcells told him he was a football player that day, and Vinatieri has acted the part ever since. "Adam's a guy you don't consider a kicker," Troy Brown said.

Until he's staring down those goalposts with a season on the line.

In an age when teams fire kickers on every other miss, Vinatieri has the perfect gene for the job. He's daring enough to try the near-impossible (he's Evel Knievel's cousin), and sensible enough never to fall for an opponent's taunts or traps (his great-great grandfather, Felix, was George Custer's bandleader and one smart enough to sit out Little Bighorn). So nobody dismisses Vinatieri with the disdain linebackers often show for the pencil-necked geeks.

On his way to a Hall of Fame that has inducted one true kicker, Jan Stenerud, Vinatieri is the obvious answer to an easy question: How differently would we view Marv Levy and Bill Parcells if Vinatieri stood in Scott Norwood's shoes?

New England's kicker doesn't have to fantasize about that, not when he's got two Super Bowl winners to occupy his thoughts. Vinatieri should go ahead and complete the hat trick. He might be the only one who can inspire American boys to put the foot back in their football dreams.